Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated list — such as the revised and midseason lists released by Baseball America or BP’s recent midseason top-50 list or Longenhagen’s summer update — will also be excluded from eligibility.

*All 200 names!

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Sandy Baez, RHP, Detroit (Profile)
A member of the Five back in early July, the right-handed Baez earned a promotion to Double-A Erie for his final two starts of the regular season. He acquitted himself well, striking out nearly a third of the batters he faced over 10.0 innings.

Most pitchers who record excellent statistical indicators and possess plus-plus velocity are ineligible ever to appear in this weekly column because they tend to populate top-100s lists. A combination of modest pedigree (he signed for just $49,000) and somewhat rudimentary secondary pitches, however, have conspired to create lower expectations from the industry where Baez is concerned.

In his start this past Monday, Baez showed a real willingness to use both a breaking ball and changeup, having some actual success with the latter of those.

Here’s an example of the breaking ball for a swinging strike:

And also the changeup, also for a swinging strike:

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Earlier in the week, it came out that the Red Sox had been using an Apple Watch in their dugout to relay information about the Yankees’ signs from their video replay staff. While sign stealing isn’t illegal, the use of electronic communication in the dugout definitely is, and for violating that rule, MLB will now have to punish the organization in some way. And if they want to use this punishment as a deterrent to keep other teams from following in Boston’s footsteps, they’ll have to go beyond a slap on the wrist.

But realistically, given where technology currently is, trying to use punishments as deterrents could easily turn into a game of whack-a-mole. As Jeff Passan notes, every team does stuff like this, but they just hide it better.

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Mikey York was coming off Tommy John surgery when the Tampa Bay Rays drafted him out of the College of Southern Nevada in the fifth round of last year’s draft. It soon became clear that he wasn’t fully recovered. The Las Vegas native was shut down after allowing 16 runs in just 9.1 innings at Rookie-level ball.

This year was a different story. York didn’t take the mound until late June, but once he did, he was lights out. In 11 starts between short-season Hudson Valley and Low-A Bowling Green, the 21-year-old right-hander allowed just 36 hits in 61 innings. He walked 11 and fanned 53, and finished the campaign with a 0.89 ERA.

Along with a repaired ulnar collateral ligament, the promising youngster possesses big-league bloodlines. His father, Mike York, played 13 professional seasons and had stints with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Cleveland Indians. Blessed with a feel for his craft and a bulldog mentality — Nolan Ryan and Greg Maddux are role models — Mikey York aspires to follow in dad’s footsteps as a Tampa Bay Ray.

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York on his repertoire and approach: “My biggest thing is that I like to command my fastball — throw it for strikes, get ahead early, work on the hitters. I like to get them off balance by mixing speeds, working inside and outside, changing eye levels. Most importantly, I let them put the ball in play.

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So, things might be getting out of hand…

A lot of folks inside and outside the game don’t care for September roster expansion. After all, why play the game one way for five months, with one set of roster rules, and then in the most crucial month of the season change the limits of rosters?

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Early Thursday, I listened to an exchange between Buster Olney and Indians president Chris Antonetti. As you’d expect, there was talk about the Indians’ winning streak, and about the impressive play of Jose Ramirez. But Olney also asked Antonetti about an observation that had been relayed to him by some number of league evaluators. In the opinions of those evaluators, one area where the Indians stand out is in their reluctance to throw predictable fastballs. Pitchers have been taught forever that the fastball needs to be established early on. What if a team simply didn’t believe that?

Listening to the segment got some gears whirring. This isn’t a post about the Indians. This is a post inspired by an observation about the Indians. Let’s have a little talk about fastball usage.

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Episode 765
The 2017 season features the highest strikeout rate in the game’s history and the highest home-run rate and the highest collective fastball velocity and the most indulgent use of relief pitchers. The game, in short, is experiencing entropy — an inevitable descent into chaos or disorder. Is the destruction of the sport imminent? “Probably not,” says managing editor Dave Cameron, who uses evidence to support his claims.

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Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 51 min play time.)

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Doug Fister has only made more and more sense. He was most surprising in the early days, the successful days, the days when Fister was a command-first No. 2. He was never considered much of a prospect, because prospect evaluators love them some velocity, but Fister made it work through his pinpoint location. He was, in a sense, in the same mold as Dallas Keuchel and Kyle Hendricks. And then, gradually, Fister got worse, as his repertoire eroded. He lost what speed he had, and he lost his results, having exceeded his own narrow margin of error. Fister joined the Astros in 2016 as a roll of the dice. He wasn’t very good, and then he was a free agent. He didn’t get a job until the desperate Angels signed him in May. He was dropped a month later. Fister became what he was going to become, having gotten to the end of the line.

Yet one last opportunity beckoned, one with the Red Sox. Dave Dombrowski had seen Fister’s best self, and he needed a pitcher. Over Fister’s first month, he allowed nearly a run per inning. A shift to the bullpen ended on July 31 anyway, and Fister has taken off. He’s thrown seven games, and he’s looked like…classic Doug Fister. I mean that. Seemingly out of nowhere, Doug Fister has turned back the clock.

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